I read this book as a spin off from
reading The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane, while MacFarlane walks in
many locations Shehadeh's account is about walking in the “same”
landscape over time – across times of great change.
This is a strongly political account
because Shehadeh is a Palestinian walking in the West Bank, land
occupied by Israel since 1967, and about which all discourse is
politically charged.
Before the foundation of the State of
Israel there was already a tension between the Palestinian experience
of the land and the various colonizers narratives about it. The life
of the Palestinians was often negated by these narratives about the
land as a barren wilderness. At one level the Israel settlement of
the West Bank is an extension of that colonial narrative of
development of the wilderness (which has marginalised native
populations across the global).
The Jewish identification with the land
of the Biblical Israel, especially as articulated by Zionists, adds
additional layers of complexity, of passion, and of pain to that
standard dynamic.
One of the most depressing aspects of
the book is Shehadeh's assessment of the Oslo Accords, which many of
us took as the only real opportunity for peace there has been, and
yet he felt they were a betrayal of the grass roots Palestinians and
a guarantor of continuing violence. Sadly his assessment
increasingly seems to have been accurate.
It is clear that there is mutual
dehumanizing of the Palestinian and Israeli populations. The current
separation, which is only going to be further entrenched by
construction of the Israeli wall, allows both sides to ignore the
humanity of the other and while that continues there is little chance
of peace. Hope of a kind, albeit still very small, comes in the
penultimate comes when Shedadeh encounters an Isreali Settler on one
of his walks, it is a humanizing encounter for them both. (For while
Shedadeh is a good man up until this point he had viewer the Settlers
as a category rather than as people).
Once you acknowledge the humanity of
the actors on both sides of a conflict simplistic divisions between
the “good” and the “bad” have to be refused – but while
resolution then appears more complex it is only be addressing that
true complexity that meaningful and lasting resolutions are possible
at all.
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